I'm Comin' Home
by SailAway
Summary: Maria comes back! And that's all I'm sayin'.


DISCLAIMER: Sadly, I am not the owner of All My Children, though I wish that I were. Please don't sue me. 

NOTE: In this, we're just pretending that Arlene never came to try to help Lorenzo.

SPOILERS: This has a lot of spoilers in it. We all know that Eva La Rue is coming back to All My Children. Just this last Monday, we even got a glimpse of what is presumably the back of her head. I don't know how they are going to bring her back to the show. 

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Alexandra Lopez sat at her computer, reading her e-mails. Her dark hair with blond streaks was pulled up into a ponytail, her nails were painted a pale shade of pink. She rubbed at her arm, where she had given blood a few days ago. She gave blood at any time she could. It just made her feel good inside to help people. Even in her robe, she looked very beautiful.

Some of the e-mails were from her friends, two were from coworkers at Edward Denver Memorial Hospital. And the last email was from a Mr. Mateo Santos, a man whom she had never heard of before.

She opened his email and began reading it.

Dear Doctor Lopez,

My son is very, very sick. He has a liver disease which will be fatal unless he receives a liver transplant. I understand that I have never before met you, but the United Red Cross has e-mailed me to inform my wife and I that you have the same blood type as our son. We received close to three hundred names of people with our sons same blood type, and are e-mailing each of these people. If just one will agree to have a few more blood tests run, maybe our son can be saved. Please email me back as soon as possible.

Sincerely,

Mateo Santos

Alexandra reread the email. She had over two months of sick days saved from work. And she did love children. She had received, in the past, other e-mails similar to this one. Most, though, requested money, and were most likely just scams. Something about this one, however, struck true with her, and her eyes were riveted to the name of the man who had sent her the email. Something about his name seemed. . .almost familiar.

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Alexandra and Mateo e-mailed each other three times during the next two days. Alexandra went and had more blood tests at the hospital where she taught, and it was found out that her blood was a perfect match with Mateo's son, Lorenzo. And, she was the only one with whom Mateo had corresponded who would agree to have the transplant. During the few days before she was to fly to the city of Pine Valley, Alexandra saw several pictures of little Lorenzo. She felt almost as if he could be her brother, or her nephew. She felt motherly towards him.

  
  


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Six days after that first email, Alexandra boarded a plane, Delta flight 845 to Pine Valley, to donate a portion of her liver to a child that she had never met. When she had told her friends about it, they all seemed incredulous.

"You're giving up your vacation to get rid of a part of your liver-which, by the way, is an important organ!-to a kid who you don't even know? You must have the biggest heart in the whole state of Nevada, Alex. There's no way I would do that!" Alexandra's best friend Sara commented.

Alexandra didn't reply.

"Look, Alex, honey, maybe you're just trying to make up for that guy at the hospital. It's okay; you don't have to make up for him. You did your best, and that's what counts."

Alexandra had just smiled. She wasn't, in fact, trying to make up for the man in the hospital. Two weeks ago, she had mis-diagnosed an elderly man in the hospital. She hadn't caught the liver cancer that was eating his insides. True, she was very upset over it, but he died within the week from heart failure, which didn't have anything to do with the fact that she had somehow missed his cancer. She was going to save a baby, save him with her liver, which had nothing to do with that old man, who had lived a good life, anyway.

The plane touched down at the Pine Valley Airport. Alex stood up, stretched, and picked up her backpack. She had checked her suitcase, and would have to go retrieve it. She glanced at her watch. In two hours, she was supposed to meet Mateo and his wife, Hayley, for dinner at a place called The Valley Inn. 

  
  


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After a quick shower and changing into some clothes that weren't wrinkled from traveling, Alex called a cab and went from her less expensive hotel to the Valley Inn.

She walked hesitantly up to the host, and asked if the Santos's were there yet. He looked at his log, and lead her towards the back of the dining room. Before they were even half way across the room, Alex could guess which people were the ones she was meeting.

A young, blond woman, wearing little or no makeup, hair not combed properly, sat at a table with a young man, hair dark, shirt wrinkled, and looking very worried. The both looked up at the same time, and their eyes widened simultaneously.

"Maria!" The man whispered.

Alex shyly smiled. Who was he talking to? "Hi. I'm Alexandra Lopez." She stuck out her hand.

Mateo was standing with his legs half bent, leaning over the table, his eyes wide in shock.

"Maria?" He repeated.

Alexandra looked at the wife. "I'm sorry. . . " She began.

Hayley stood all the way up. "Oh my God." She shook Alexandra's hand, which was still stuck out into the air. "You're. . .Wow." And Hayley knew that clearly, Alexandra didn't remember either of them. She must have amnesia, a common ailment, it seemed, in Pine Valley.

Mateo finally broke from his reverie and hugged Alexandra tight against him. Tears came to his eyes. 

"I missed you, so much. You've barely changed in five years!" Tears were rolling down his face. Alexandra looked embarrassed.

"I'm sorry. I don't understand." She told him.

Hayley pulled Mateo away. "She doesn't remember." She hissed in his ear. She turned back towards the woman who was Maria, and who was somehow, also Alexandra. "Come on, let's get to the hospital, okay? My husband, he's just so glad that you're here."

Alexandra accepted the fact that the husband was so happy that he almost seemed like he wasn't in his right mind.

Hayley drove them all to the hospital. The whole time, Mateo stared at Alexandra, an expression on his face of pure joy. To himself, he kept repeating, "It's a miracle! It's a miracle!" Alexandra ignored his strange babbling. She instead talked to Hayley, who didn't seem insane like Mateo, but did seem very nosy.

Hayley asked about her job, about how long she had been working, where she lived. How long she had lived there. About her childhood.

"I have no memory of my childhood. I was in a boating accident, and was rescued on a small island off the coast of California. I don't exactly know what happened to me before that. I'm sorry." She seemed almost embarrassed about not knowing anything that had happened to her before five years ago.

  
  


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They got to the hospital. Hayley ran in, ahead of Mateo and Alexandra. She ran to find Edmund, who was there with his fiancee, Brooke, playing with Lorenzo.

"Edmund!" Hayley's eyes were bright, and she looked happier than she had in days.

Edmund smiled back at her.

"You are not going to believe this." And with that, Mateo and Alexandra entered.

Alexandra's eyes went immediately to Edmund's. Just looking at him stirred something deep in her heart. If she believed in love at first site, then this must be how it felt. And again, there was that feeling of remembrance.

Edmund ran towards her, hugged her, lifted her off the ground, kissed her deeply.

Under ordinary circumstances, Alexandra would not have let a strange man do this to her. But something about his seemed so right. She returned the kiss, surprising herself. 

As he put her down, she saw that he was crying, but he was so joyful that it made her smile, just looking at him.

"Sammy? Matty?" She asked. Who did those names belong to? She asked herself.

Edmund kissed her again. "Let's go home. You can see them. They're so big now."

And suddenly, Alexandra had a memory. A clear, true memory, not one of the fake memories that she had made up over the past several years, when she had been trying to create a past for herself. This one was a real memory.

In her memory, she was wearing a white dress: A wedding dress. She was leaning in to kiss someone- Edmund. It was February. In Garden City, New York. And then they went on a honeymoon to Hungary.

"I remember." She whispered as she kissed Edmund. Fate had brought them back together, in time to save her nephew, and in time to prevent the wedding of Edmund and Brooke, which would have been a very bad wedding as neither of them held a love as deep as the one that Edmund and Maria shared. Brooke smiled sadly, pulled the engagement ring from her finger, and handed it to Edmund. He looked at her, and anguish passed across his face.

True, he did love Maria much more than he could ever love Brooke, but it still made him feel iniquitous for hurting her. "I'm sorry." He told her. Brooke kissed him on the cheek, then left. It was clearly a family moment right now, and she realized that no matter how close she was, she wasn't a family member, and now that Maria was back, never would be.

Edmund and Maria kissed and kissed.

  
  


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And suddenly, Edmund was in his bed, sitting up, tears on his cheeks. Brooke was laying beside him, an arm thrown protectively across his stomach. 

It had all been a dream. There was no Maria. She was still gone, dead. He looked back at Brooke, and realized that she wasn't enough. He could never truly love again unless it was with Maria.

He cried himself back to sleep.


End file.
